365 days to your richest life: day 3
It is a stormy night here in Vancouver (dare I say ‘dark and stormy’?) and my wind chimes are making beautiful music.
I had an interesting interview with a financial planner today, and we talked about the importance of cash flow management for people in the 25- to 46-year-old range. I agree wholeheartedly with his premise that understand how much you’re netting (that is, how much money lands in your bank account after deductions) versus how much your spending is the crux of long term financial peace, but it made me think, too, about how easy it is to spend.
I had dinner with someone I love recently — she’s 20, working in a low-paying job, and already in debt to a credit card company. (To the credit card company, by the way — that’s unconscionable.) As she said, it’s her fault — but in our society, blaming someone without financial maturity for wracking up available credit card debt is akin to blaming toddlers for eating the candy that Grandma leaves on the coffee table.
We spend to feel better. We spend to eat when we’re far from home or have no food in the pantry that’s readily prepared. We spend to feel stylish and well-turned-out at work. We spend because our friends are spending, because all those advertisements promise us happiness, beauty, youth and that we’ll smell better. We spend because we don’t have time to think.
Then when we overspend, some talking head will tell us it’s because we’ve made bad decisions. Oy!
If you’re outspending your pay cheque, or not accumulating the financial resources you need to fuel your dreams, forget about will power. Forget about discipline. Do you honestly thing that will power and self-discipline has a breath of a chance in the face of $41 billion a year in annual advertising spending?
But there is a way — you simply have to find those things you love more than the gratification of spending. First, find your joy. If you’re overspending, it is quite likely because you aren’t finding enough pleasure in your life. Think about what you love, and make a list of three things you love to do that don’t cost money — then carve out some time to do more of that. Pleasure and relaxation are necessities to us humans, and without them, we will self-destructively use whatever is at hand to stimulate those synapses. (If you love to shop, consider joining your local Freecycle, or visit a thrift store a few times a week to find what treasures the universe has in store for you there.)
Second, just as staying away from fast food restaurants is job one when working toward a healthy body weight, stay away from advertising. Instead of watching TV, record the shows you can’t miss on your VCR and then speed through the ads. Visit your library to rent DVDs and videos. And whatever you do, stay away from magazines, which are just catalogs with articles thrown in to confuse us while making us feel that perfectly normal thighs are humongous tree trunks.